After passing around some
earlier drafts of some of the material in this book, I was accused by
the readers of those drafts of many things, most of which are not true.
I am not "anti-gay" in any
sense. I have great compassion for gays and lesbians, and I advocate
full human rights for all of them. Considering the negative
consequences which accrue to openly gay individuals, it is a wonder
that any choose to "come out of the closet." Because of those very same
negative consequences, by the time a person is willing to consider that
their true sexual orientation is really "gay" or "lesbian," it is
virtually axiomatic that it is far too late for anyone to do anything
at all to "fix" that, as if it is a problem. Nonetheless, while our
present reproductive rate allows humanity to be quite tolerant of gays
and lesbians in our society (and since these individuals are natural
products of the very forces we have set to work in our society, our
morality should require that we are tolerant of them), it is
nevertheless anti-survival for the human race to continue to foster the
production of gays and lesbians. In other words, the gay and lesbian
life style can only be tolerated as a small minority; if "everyone does
it," the human race as we know it would disappear.10
The difficulty for us is that, as tolerance for gays and lesbians
becomes more widespread, it becomes easier for individuals to decide
that they are gay or lesbian. Another way of saying this same thing is
that it has been our intolerance of gays and lesbians that ensured the
majority of our children continued to choose a heterosexual
orientation. When we remove that intolerance from our society, many
more individuals will naturally decide that they are gay or lesbian
because we have done nothing to remove the factors in our child rearing
process which tend to produce gays and lesbians. This is what I cannot
accept as a long term situation for humanity.
Many support groups for gays
and lesbians will openly admit that they have a vested interest in
having many more individuals declare their sexual orientation to be gay
or lesbian because they believe that the more individuals who do so,
the more likely it is that tolerance of gays and lesbians will result.
Just to be absolutely clear, I am in no way against tolerance for gays
and lesbians; what I am against is continuing to allow our child
rearing process to produce large quantities of gays and lesbians due to
the present system of training our youngest children to prefer same sex
relationships.
I am also not anti-Christian,
anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish (but the Jews themselves generally prefer to
call you anti-Semitic), or anti-religion. Throughout history, religion
has been the arm of the state which was charged with indoctrinating the
populace with the moral philosophy which the state found to be
acceptable. To the extent which there has been religious toleration by
the state, that has only occurred when the state believed that it was
so firmly in control of the situation that it could afford to tolerate
some dissent, and when the state realized that virtually all religions
teach a moral philosophy which is based on a value system which is
acceptable to the state.
Virtually all religions have a
moral philosophy which presumes that the members of the religion might
well be called at any moment to do battle with the forces of evil, and
thus most religions are quite suitable for the raising of armies to
fight one another.11 But there are no barbarians at our gates. Western Civilization now controls virtually all of Planet Earth.12
While there is as yet no strong centralized government which rules this
planet, the skeleton of that government exists in the present United
Nations.13
Bit by bit, our own government in the United States is turning over its
leadership role in the world to various multi-national organizations,
such as the UN and NATO.
As the recent "victory"14
over the Soviet Union is gradually consolidated over the next decade or
two, mankind will be, for the first time in history, confronted with
the possibility of true world peace. This will make virtually all
religions obsolete, at least to the extent which they preach a system
of values suitable for raising an army. Mankind needs to refocus the
necessary role of religion in society to de-emphasize the
confrontational aspects of our religious beliefs and to reemphasize the
values for living harmoniously with one another.
The Roman Catholic Church does
see this need for change, and the present pope is actively trying to
recruit all of the Christian denominations to at least acknowledge the
common values which all Christians purport to share. It is obvious that
the pope would prefer to have all of Christianity acknowledge him as
the primary leader of Christianity in some way, but the nature of that
recognition is "on the table" for the discussions with all of the major
Christian denominations on how to make this happen.
But this is merely an attempt
to patch together a coalition from a group which was fractured by
several schisms over the last 2,000 years. There is no proposal "on the
table" to make any significant changes in doctrine. So the question
arises: have we learned nothing of value in the last twenty centuries?
Does the essentially Jewish tradition of Jesus Christ from 2,000 years
ago still have relevance today? Can the value system of a great desert
warrior, Mohammed, still be the best value system available today? In
my opinion, the clear answer to questions such as these is "No." Why?
Because the Industrial Revolution made all prior value systems obsolete.
I believe it is high time for
humanity to at least consider adopting a system of religious belief
which is not based upon a fairy tale; a somewhat less polite way of
saying this same thing is that humanity needs a religion which is not
based upon a "big lie." Are we finally adult enough to admit that the
myths which have grown up around Jesus Christ are probably just as
false as the myths which have grow up around Saint Nicholas? While
there are those, such as John Dominic Crossan, who are willing to admit
the myths but retain their Christian beliefs, my own opinion is that,
once the myths are discarded, what remains is that Jesus Christ was
merely a great philosopher of his day. So too were Buddha and Mohammed
the great philosophers of their own times and places. Each of those
three is more or less acknowledged to be a real historical person who
set forth some sort of system of basic values for all of their
followers. However, the values which each of them set forth are, to a
large degree, closely related to the predominate value systems of their
own times and places. To a very large degree, each was a religious
reformer who is more comparable to Martin Luther than to God or some
prophet. But the bottom line is that each of them espoused a
Philosophy. Each of them, to one degree or another, talked about each
of the subjects which any philosophical system must address.
But the moment that you
consider the great religious leaders of all time to be mere
philosophers, you put them on the level of all mankind, because anyone
can set forth his or her own philosophy. According to Will Durant, the
list of the greatest philosophers of all time includes: Plato,
Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant,
Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. But is it not
appropriate to include Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed in that same
list? Traditionally we have been taught not to consider religious
leaders as philosophers. In fact, philosophy has been seen at times as
a sacrilegious science. However, if you refer back to the definition of
philosophy in Book VI, Section B you will clearly see that the
teachings of those great religious leaders are, in fact, each part of a
philosophy because each is, at a minimum, "a system of principles for
guidance in practical affairs."15
Religion performs a vital role
in our society. Basically, we cannot be civilized without some system
of Philosophy, and it has traditionally been the role of religion to
indoctrinate our young with the principles of the accepted Philosophy
for the civilization. Also, religion plays a key role in the
socialization of our young, and it is very wrong to fail to create a
group identity by not engaging in this kind of socialization. To a
large degree, the very things which are wrong with Western Civilization
today can be traced back to a failure to transmit our civilization to a
large group of our young by failing to indoctrinate them with
Philosophy and socialize them into an acceptable group identity.16
Accordingly, if I am
anti-anything in this book, it is that I am anti-atheist because the
atheists assert that it is wrong to transmit our Philosophy to their
young and they fail to engage their young in group socialization. The
problem with allowing people to raise their children as atheists is
roughly the same as the problem with allowing Christians to teach their
kids at home: there is little or no control which ensures that children
of atheists will learn the key lessons which all children must learn in
order to be civilized. With home schooling, there is at least a
recognition of the problem and some attempt to have the local public
education establishment exercise some degree of control over the end
result. With atheism, there are no controls to ensure that the children
are civilized.
I do suppose that I could be
labeled as a "Humanist," but I have no desire to be lumped together
with the others who have organized themselves under that label. Most of
the organized Humanist movement consists of either brain dead
individuals17
or an elite corps of intellectuals who cannot agree on anything of
value. Thus, there is no solid core to this movement; it consists
entirely of the disaffected who would be on the fringes of any real
social movement.
The remedy for this may well
be for me to start my own "Humanist" movement, but it remains to be
seen if I have the charisma necessary to attract a following large
enough to make it worthwhile. In one sense, this book is an attempt to
gauge the reaction of the masses to the essential dogma of my belief
system. There should be a large number of people out there who are
ready to adopt a value system which synthesizes the best philosophies
of all of human history and positions mankind to move forward to the
next stage of social evolution. If so, I am ready to hold up the banner
and lead them on. On the other hand, if my ideas are generations ahead
of their time, as is true for most of the great philosophers, this book
at least records these ideas for posterity to do with them what it will.
Writing a book is taking a
shot at a limited form of immortality. Some books are widely read for
thousands of years, while others disappear overnight. I have done my
part and committed my thoughts to paper. It now remains for the readers
of this book to pass judgment on those thoughts, and as a consequence
of that judgment, grant me my allotted share of immortality, if any.
Gentle readers, it is with a great sense of philosophical detachment
that I await your judgment.
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA; SEPTEMBER 4, 1995.
10 It is certainly possible to envision a human race of gays and lesbians. However, it would not be any human race which we would recognize because it would not be in any sense a homogenous group of humanity, but instead, two separate cultures, distinct by the sex at birth, living symbiotically by the mere act of the gays providing sperm to the lesbians so that children may be produced. An all-female culture, using cloning techniques, could also be envisioned.
11 Obviously, there are exceptions. For example, the Quakers are openly pacifistic.
12 The moment that you educate your population sufficiently to deal with science and technology as developed by Western Civilization, you almost by default also educate the population in many of the essential philosophies of Western Civilization. Thus, the present fundamentalist regime in Iran is an unstable throwback which cannot survive more than a few decades. The unraveling is already visible to the astute observer. For example, to maintain control, the Islamic regime has recently found it necessary to make satellite dish receivers illegal. The people chafe under repressions such as this. So long as contact is maintained with the outside world, the people will know the essentially oppressive nature of their own government. In essence, this is a "wartime government" much like Communism was for the Soviet Union. It can be expected to eventually collapse for many of the same reasons. (see The Lessons of History (1968), by Will and Ariel Durant, page 66, where it states: "Here too Communism was a war economy. Perhaps it survives through continual fear of war; given a generation of peace it would probably be eroded by the nature of man.")
13 From time-to-time, I assert that the United Nations Security Council is really the equivalent of the First Triumvirate in old Rome.
14 It is a "victory" only in the sense that the government of the Soviet Union collapsed while the government of the United States did not collapse. What really happened is that we each adopted the other's best points until, at the time of the "victory," we were more alike than we were different. The final two sentences of Chapter IX of The Lessons of History (1968), by Will and Ariel Durant, page 67, read: "The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet." It only took two and a half decades, which is nothing in historical terms.
15 In no way do I contend that religious teachings constitute "the rational investigation of the truths and principals of being, knowledge, or conduct." Most religious teaching is not obviously based upon rational thought processes, but is instead based upon myth. However, it is fundamental that religious teachings deal with "the truths and principals of being, knowledge, or conduct." In my mind, the fault lies with the definition of what constitutes Philosophy, as even irrational religious teachings, such as those common in primitive tribes, will clearly still constitute a "Philosophy."
16 The alternative is to allow the young to socialize themselves, which will generally result in their choosing an anti-social "gang" culture or choosing to be "loners," each of which is bad for society.
17 By "brain dead" I mean those who have not had a decent original thought in decades.